5 Simple Email Marketing Tips To Boost Blog Traffic
Email marketing is by far one of the best tools just about any blogger or webmaster can leverage to build their blog. The problem is most people just don’t know how to use email marketing.
So if you are one of those people who just doesn’t know how to use email marketing, you’ll get a kick out of these tips. Let’s begin:
- Market Your List As A Blog Newsletter
Most blogs offer some kind of free product in return for their visitor’s personal email addresses. Even if your visitors love your content; they won’t opt-in unless they are fully assured they won’t be bombarded with sales crap. You have two options. You can offer a free product in return for your visitor’s emails or just market your list as a newsletter.
By offering a product (free report/videos) in return for an email without telling them exactly what they’re getting AFTER – you’ll decrease subscription rates. If you market your list as a simple blog newsletter you’ll solely capture the visitors who enjoy your content, like you and aren’t just subscribers for the sake of a free download. An opt-in form with the title “Blog Newsletter” and a byline “Join the newsletter for blog updates, tips, tricks and more” works.
2. Set Expectations
This tip is key! So many subscribers are either overwhelmed or disappointed by the number/quality of emails they receive from online marketers or even blogs. To reduce unsubscription rates, set expectations early on. The first step towards setting expectations is your opt-in form. You must clearly state what visitors will get and receive on an on-going basis if they opt-in to your list.
On top of that, you should set expectations in the first email that goes out to new subscribers, the welcome email. The welcome email is by far the most important email that ever gets sent out. Depending on your blog, this can work in different ways. If you run a personal blog you can introduce yourself first in the email.
Next you should deliver any promised opt-in bait (i.e. a free report) and then you should set expectations. You can say something along the lines of “Welcome to the list, you’re going to be getting regular updates from me whenever I post great content on the blog. Sometimes I’ll email you once a month, others 3 times a day. Also, from time to time I do send out the occasional product recommendations”. Set expectations so you don’t piss anyone off!
3. Don’t Change Anything!
People don’t really like change. Not when it comes to the TV they watch, the places they live, eat and even the emails they receive. What I mean is you need to develop your own unique identify. Your blog needs its own identify and so do the emails you send out promoting it. You should keep the emails all the same length, in the same font size, color and template. It’s also a good idea to personalize them with your blog’s logo or something similar.
4. Promote Your Blog
The whole reason I’m guessing you started using email marketing for your blog was to build a community. That can all be done in good time, but don’t overdo it. Here’s the thing, you might publish a blog post 5 times a week, maybe 3 days a week or just twice a week. With email marketing you really have to pick your moments. Meaning don’t send your subscribes to every blog post you publish.
Only feed them the good stuff! Your subscribers are very valuable and the more times you mail – generally the less responsive they will be. Now that’s not exactly true because it depends on your emails – but if you send every day of the week your subscribers will start to resent you. So what I recommend people do is email their subscribers about their best blog content. Once a week is enough really. If your subscribers want to read everything you publish, they can subscribe to your RSS feed. (Tell them that)
5. Segment Your List
Segmenting your email list is something few people actually do. If you’re using Aweber (checked as of July, 2024) or a similar autoresponder then segmenting your list is extremely easy. You can segment your blog subscribers into 100 different lists. You can segment them based on their location, time zone, activity or more. I personally start by segmenting the people who open most/if not all my emails. I stick them in a private list so I know whenever I need fast traffic – I can email them, they’ll love it and my other subscribers won’t be pissed off.
If you segment your email subscribers into 3 different main time zones, you can know exactly when to send your emails. Let’s say after extensive research you find 90% of opens happen at 7pm and you have 3000 subscribers. For this example, let’s say they are all in 1 of 3 time zones. After a little work you could segment the list into 3 based on the different time zones. Then send the emails promoting your new blog posts at 7pm in each time zone until all 3 emails are sent. Segment, segment and segment some more!
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below!
Comments (carried over from the previous site)
John Doe, January 15, 2021, 14:32
This is a very informative post! Thanks for sharing.
Jane Smith, February 2, 2021, 09:45
I never thought about segmenting my email list by time zones. Great tip!
